It was Christmas Eve in the early 80s. Some friends and I were headed out to celebrate and stopped by to pick up our friend, Dorothy “Dot” Larson. Dot’s mother, Grace’s health was failing and she was confined to a hospital bed set up in their dining room. Shortly after we arrived, someone knocked on the door.
It was Norm Brown and Suzy Bogguss, friends of Tim and Jennifer Hutchings, who lived across the street. Norm and Suzy were the hottest thing on the local music scene, performing regularly at Ann’s Inn, and other establishments in the area. With guitar cases in tow, they were also headed out, most likely to an engagement.
They knew Dot and Grace and wanted to stop by on their way and wish them a Merry Christmas. Suzy wrapped her guitar strap around her neck, pulled up a chair alongside Grace’s bed, and sang a medley of Christmas carols just for her which brought a smile to her face. I didn’t know much about Suzy before that, but that encounter told me volumes about who she was, not just as an amazing singer, but as a kind and caring human being. That was about 40 years and a lifetime ago.
This Saturday, Suzy will return to the area as the headliner for the final presentation of the Bishop Hill Heritage Association’s “Concerts in the Colony” series. The free concert in the lawn chair-friendly village park begins at 1 p.m. with special guest Morgan Myles, one of country music’s newest female artists. Suzy will follow with the concert to end around 4 p.m.
Many people seem to have thought over the years that I had some sort of special connection with Suzy. I’d get calls asking for a way to get in touch with her from people seeking donations for a benefit auction or other fundraiser. The truth is, even though I covered Suzy’s early career extensively, our paths only crossed a few times, usually at a meet-and-greet.
My “secret weapon” when it came to covering Suzy ,was Mildred Stacy, the retired owner of a dry cleaning business in Kewanee, who happened to be Suzy’s mother, Barb “B.J.” Bogguss’ cousin. Mil and “B.J.” managed to circumvent the blockades put up by managers and publicists, to get me backstage for a photo op of Suzy with Dot Larson, superfans Bill and Jackie Oberg, and my sister, Carolyn and brother-in-law Doug Oak, an Aledo native and big fan, among others.
Suzy has not been back in Kewanee since 2003 when she appeared at Wal-Mart as part of a tour to promote her latest album, “Swing.” Nevertheless, I have compiled a rather thick file of clippings, press releases, backstage passes, and photos, over the years. My most valued possession is Suzy’s first album, which I bought while she was performing on a Saturday night in 1981 at The Gold Post, in Galva.
Suzy raised the money to produce the album herself at a private recording studio in Dunlap, with donations from friends and fans, many of them at Ann’s Inn, now Cerno’s, in Kewanee. After a.concert at the Peoria Civic Center, I was standing behind the autograph table with Suzy’s husband, Doug Crider, when the next fan in line was Gene Scott, owner of Fraker’s Grove Supper Club in LaFayette, where Suzy had performed in the early days and often accompanied by Scott. Gene put a copy of the 10-year-old LP on the table for Suzy to sign prompting her to say, “I thought I burned all of those!” Glad she didn’t.The album, simply titled “Suzy,” includes the Ann’s fans favorite “Ghost Riders in the Sky,”and is now considered a rare collector’s item.
Suzy took piano lessons and was involved with music in the school and church in her hometown of Aledo but never picked up a guitar until she was in high school. She became frustrated with lessons and finally taught herself to play. She credits the country and swing records her parents, Bud and Barb Bogguss played in their home, for “catching her ear.”
Graduating in 1975, she went to Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington for two years majoring in art, then transferred to Illinois State University in Normal, where she received a degree in metalsmithing, planning to make jewelry. She earned her way through college as a door-to-door vacuum salesperson and a waitress, until she got a job at a place called The Gallery, singing one night a week. Her pay was all the beer and pizza she could handle. But, as was to happen often over the next two years, someone heard her and hired her for their bar, which eventually led her to Peoria, and soon to Kewanee.
She had met a Kewanee teacher named Norm Brown in Peoria, and one night he came up to her while she was singing in the Quad Cities and said he was scouting talent for a bar called Ann’s, in Kewanee.
“Where?” She remembers asking. She moved to Kewanee and teamed up with Brown. Bars were beginning to realize that live entertainment would draw bigger crowds and sell more beer. For nine months they were regulars at Ann’s, where the name was soon changed to Lloyd’s, every Tuesday night, with a group called The Pig City Saloon Band.
During the summer months they traveled west, performing in Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. They were also soon booked on Wednesday nights at Jimal’s, formerly Mike’s Pub, by new owners Jim and Alja Rashid, who had just closed a popular restaurant in Toulon and were turning the reins of their new venture over to their son, Tony.
Fans also found Norm and Suzy at Happy Joe’s and Jack’s Place, among other area watering holes. Suzy liked Kewanee because it was centrally located and served as a perfect base of operations for engagements in larger cities in west central Illinois. By 1985, however, the urge to follow her dream took over and she made the jump to Nashville.
Singing at whatever bar or honky tonk on Music Row where she could find work, she was soon spotted by none other than Dolly Parton who booked her as the first featured female artist at a new theme park she was building in her hometown of Pigeon Forge, Tenn., called Dollywood. A promotional album produced there found its way to Jim Fogelsong, president of Capitol Records Nashville who signed Suzy to her first recording contract in 1986.
By the 1990s, she was part of a wave of young, female artists in country music that would change the industry, and get Suzy invited by President Bill Clinton in 1995 to perform at the White House, along with Alison Krauss and Kathy Mattea, to celebrate the legacy of women in country music. A number of Top 10 hits, like “Drive South,” “Letting Go,” and “Outbound Plane,” and a Grammy-nominated duet with Lee Greenwood, “Hopelessly Yours, propelled Suzy to over four million records sold.
Suzy returned to Kewanee in 1989 to perform a concert at Hog Days, shortly after winning the Academy of Country Music’s Best New Female Vocalist Award, an honor she would receive a few years later from the Country Music Association. She also returned in 2002 for a pair of concerts to dedicate the newly renovated Petersen Auditorium at Kewanee High School.
Back in 1981, Mil Stacy stood up at a family reunion where cousin Barb’s daughter was asked to sing. When those gathered kept talking, Mil, as she tells it, stood up, let out a shrill whistle and shouted,”Shut up! This girl’s going to be famous someday!” The same prediction was made by C.R.”Randy” Lane, of Bishop Hill. A regular customer and self-described Poet Laureate of Ann’s Inn, who wrote the liner notes for Suzy’s first album, and said “This lady is doomed to be famous someday…buy this record now before the price goes up.”
In a telephone interview in 2003 before the Wal-Mart tour stop, Suzy looked back on those days when she played Ann’s Inn and Happy Joe’s and said “Kewanee was where I realized I liked to sing to an audience and that they liked to hear me sing…it is where I decided what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. The town where I grew up (Aledo) was too small to have any nightlife…I found it in Kewanee.”
